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STUART CHURCHILL'S
CHANCE, AND A CRACKED PHO
NOGRAPH RECORD, BROUGHT
HIM TO STARDOM ON THE AIR
II Stuart Churchill. It is a song that was written almost a hundred years ago, but one which Stuart Iard for the first time a short ten years ago. And since it first hearing his life and his career have been inextric
By GLADYS FIST
ably bound up in it. It has become his guide and inspiration. Had Stuart Churchill not listened to a cracked Heifetz recording of Schubert's "Ave Maria" he probably would not be a star on NBC's new Saturday night program over the Red network. In fact, he might not be singing at all. That sounds strange and melodramatic, but not as strange and melodramatic as it really is.
Ten years ago Stuart Churchill was a boy in his teens hammering away at xylophone and drums with a Chautauqua unit which was playing small western towns. One night stands, or two at the most. But to Stu, who had been raised in a small town in Kansas, there was romance and adventure in this nomadic life. He had been with the Chautauqua show for two summers — two summers in which he had grown used to the constant pulling up of tent stakes and starting on again, two summers in which part of the romance and adventure of the life had become more or less prosaic. One night, during that second summer, his show was travelling over Marshall Pass in Colorado by bus. Suddenly the road was obscured by a terrific cloudburst. The driver proceeded cautiously for a time, but soon it became impossibly dangerous to go on, and he pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. The top and sides of the bus were filled with holes, and by this time all of its occupants were soaked to the skin.
One of the men looking for better shelter jumped out on the road. A few minutes later he came back to say that he had found a deserted and unlocked shack a small distance away. Stuart admits that he owes this fellow a lasting debt of gratitude.
They followed the man to the shack, went inside and waited for the cloudburst to pass. They were there for over an hour — ten wet, shivering men sitting on the floor of a dingy room lit by the feeble glow of a single candle. The room was bare save for a broken chair, a stool, a table from which all traces of paint were worn, and — of all things — a Victrola. It was a very old fashioned Victrola, even for ten years ago. with a huge megaphone-like horn; near the instrument there lay two broken records and one that was cracked. It was that one cracked record which changed the entire course of Churchill's life. That record Heifetz (Continued on page 52)
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